The literature on perceptual knowledge—or, more broadly, the epistemology of perception—addresses a wide array of issues that often overlap. Among the most prominent questions in the literature are the following: How should we account for perceptual knowledge and related notions such as perceptual evidence, justification, rationality, and entitlement? Is any perceptual knowledge/justification immediate, or is all perceptual knowledge/justification mediated by other knowledge/justification? Must perceptual experiences be understood as having conceptual content—or as having representational content at all—to justify perceptual beliefs? How should the metaphysics of perception inform the epistemology of perception (or vice versa)? How can we address skeptical threats to the status of our perceptual beliefs? Do we have the same evidence for our perceptual beliefs in good and bad cases of perceptual experience? More broadly, what is the relationship between the epistemic standing of our perceptual beliefs in good and bad cases?

Key works

Some central works about the nature of perceptual knowledge are Dretske(1969, 2000), Goldman (1976), McDowell (1994), Williamson (2000), Johnston (2006), and Sosa (2007). Some central works about the nature of perceptual justification, entitlement and rationality are Pryor (2000), Huemer (2001), Burge (2003) and Wright (2004). Important discussions of the relationship between perceptual content and the epistemology of perception include Sellars (1956), Martin (1993), Brewer (1999), Heck (2000), and Silins (2011). Important discussions of the relationship between the metaphysics and epistemology of perception include Fumerton (1985), Martin (2006), McDowell (2008), and Sosa (2011). Pryor (2000), Huemer (2001), and Wright (2002) rank among the most important recent discussions of perception and skepticism. Pritchard (2012) and Schellenberg (2013) have developed accounts of the relationship between the epistemology of the good and the bad cases.

Introductions

Opie and O’Brien (2004), BonJour (2007), and Siegel and Silins (forthcoming) provide overviews of the literature on the epistemology of perception.

In the early 1990s there emerged a growing interest with the concept of epistemic entitlement. Philosophers who acknowledge the existence of entitlements maintain that there are beliefs or judgments unsupported by evidence available to the subject, but which the subject nonetheless has the epistemic right to hold. Some of these may include beliefs non-inferentially sourced in perception, memory, introspection, testimony, and the a priori. Unlike the traditional notion of justification, entitlement is often characterized as an externalist type of epistemic warrant, (...) in the sense that a subject’s being entitled is determined by facts and circumstances that are independent of any reasoning capacities she may or may not have, and which the subject herself need not understand or be able to recognize. One key motivation for this view is that the inclusion of entitlement in epistemology can account for the commonly held intuition that largely unreflective individuals, such as children and non-human animals, possess warrant and basic knowledge about the world. It also paves the way for a tenable foundationalist epistemology, according to which there exist warranted beliefs which are not themselves warranted or justified by any further beliefs. This article explores theories of entitlement as presented by four prominent philosophers: Fred Dretske, Tyler Burge, Crispin Wright, and Christopher Peacocke. (shrink)

Hamid Vahid criticizes Tyler Burge's account of perceptual entitlement. Vahid argues that Burge's account fails to satisfy a criterion of adequacy that any correct account of perceptual warrant must satisfy. According to Vahid, a correct account of perceptual warrant must allow for perceptual beliefs which are produced by a properly functioning perceptual system yet which lack warrant. The present article argues that Vahid's critique of Burge fails. It presents numerous examples of such beliefs that are consistent with Burge's account of (...) perceptual entitlement. (shrink)

Philosophers debate whether all, some or none of the represcntational content of our sensory experience is conccptual, but the technical term "concept" has different uses. It is commonly linked more or less closely with the notions of judgdment and reasoning, but that leaves open the possibility that these terms share a systematic ambiguity or indeterminacy. Donald Davidson, however, holds an unequivocal and consistent, if paradoxical view that there are strictly speaking no psychological states with representational or intentional content except the (...) propositional attitudes of language users, since thc source or fundamental bearer of intentionality is the employed sentence. Accordingly he claims that what has content in ordinary sense experience is not sensation, but propositional belief caused, but not justified, by sensation. John McDowell, sharing some ofDavidson's premises,holds a less paradoxical, but (l will argue) equivocal and incoherent view that post-infantile human sensory expcrience must have content in so far as it is what grounds perceptual belief but that this content is itself conceptual or propositional, dependent on language and culture. Reasons are givcn in the present article for rejecting both views, and their common premises. It is argued that perceptual or sensory states have intentional content which is no more conceptual or propositional than the world is. Recognition that perceptual content and conceptual content are, in a certain unsurprising way incommensurable allows for a more realistic understanding of the relationship between Language and the world as we experience it. (shrink)

On the face of it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views bear a strong resemblance to contemporary disjunctivist theories of perception, especially John McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism. Like McDowell , Merleau-Ponty seems to be a direct realist about perception and holds that veridical and illusory perceptions are distinct. This paper furthers this comparison. Furthermore, it is argued that elements of Merleau-Ponty’s thought provide a stronger case for McDowell’s kind of epistemological view than McDowell himself provides. Merleau-Ponty’s early thought can be used to develop a (...) unique version of epistemological disjunctivism that is worth consideration alongside contemporary views on perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Since the most promising path to a solution to the problem of skepticism regarding perceptual knowledge seems to rest on a sharp distinction between perceiving and inferring, I begin by clarifying and defending that distinction. Next, I discuss the chief obstacle to success by this path, the difficulty in making the required distinction between merely logical possibilities that one is mistaken and the real (Austin) or relevant (Dretske) possibilities which would exclude knowledge. I argue that this distinction cannot be drawn (...) in the ways Austin and Dretske suggest without begging the questions at issue. Finally, I sketch and defend a more radical way of identifying relevant possibilities that is inspired by Austin's controversial suggestion of a parallel between saying I know and saying I promise: a claim of knowledge of some particular matter is relative to a context in which questions about the matter have been raised. (shrink)

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective (...) order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails. (shrink)

Ethology brought some crucial insights and perspectives to the study of behavior, in particular the idea that behavior can be studied within a comparative-evolutionary framework by means of homologizing components of behavioral patterns and by causal analysis of behavior components and their integration. Early ethology is well-known for its extensive use of qualitative observations of animals under their natural conditions. These observations are combined with experiments that try to analyze behavioral patterns and establish specific claims about animal behavior. Nowadays, there (...) is still disagreement about the significance of observation and experiments and their relation. (shrink)

This is a full length review in which I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Jane Geaney's On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. Geaney's strengths lie in her refusal to import Western epistemological presuppositions into depictions of Early Chinese philosophy, her meticulous canvassing of key Warring States texts, and her insightful reconstruction of Early Chinese epistemology as based on perception rather than abstract concepts. Her weaknesses are the limited range of her representative texts and her occasional (...) overgeneralizations. In the first half of the review, I summarize Geaney's solid conclusions: knowledge in Warring States texts was stated in terms of, and even constituted by, seeing and hearing (as opposed to the primacy of sight in the West); seeing and hearing were referred to in paired tropes; the epistemology of seeing and hearing generally involved moral evaluation; and the heartmind had a triple role in this process as verifier, as ruler, and as a sense in its own right. In the second half of the review, I demonstrate the limitations of Geaney's methodology, using her example of the relationship of qi and wind. (shrink)

One of the most important and perennially debated philosophical questions is whether we can have knowledge of the external world. Butchvarov here considers whether and how skepticism with regard to such knowledge can be refuted or at least answered. He argues that only a direct realist view of perception has any hope of providing a compelling response to the skeptic and introduces the radical innovation that the direct object of perceptual, and even dreaming and hallucinatory, experience is always a material (...) object, but not necessarily one that actually exists. This leads him to a metaphysics in which reality is ultimately constructed by human decisions out of objects that are ontologically more basic but which cannot be said in themselves to be either real or unreal. (shrink)

In response to recent debates in color ontology, I present an account of color that resolves the issue in a new way by conceiving of colors as properties of appearances. Appearances are both objective and subjective: they are real-world events reducible to psychophysical interactions involving environmental stimuli and experiential states. The case is made for accepting experience as an actual component of colors themselves as well as being the fundamental epistemic evidence for their instantiation.

In this paper I assume that we have some intuitive knowledge—i.e. beliefs that amount to knowledge because they are based on intuitions. The question I take up is this: given that some intuition makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? We can ask a similar question about perception. That is: given that some perception makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? (...) A natural idea about perception is that a perception makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you sensorily aware of the concrete objects it is about. The analogous idea about intuition is that an intuition makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you intellectually aware of the abstract objects it is about. I expand both ideas into fuller accounts of perceptual and intuitive knowledge, explain the main challenge to this sort of account of intuitive knowledge (i.e. the challenge of making sense of intellectual awareness), and develop a response to it. (shrink)

The Gettier Problem is the problem of revising the view that knowledge is justified true belief in a way that is immune to Gettier counter-examples. The “Gettier Problem problem”, according to Lycan, is the problem of saying what is misguided about trying to solve the Gettier Problem. In this paper I take up the Gettier Problem problem. I distinguish giving conditions that are necessary and sufficient for knowledge from giving conditions that explain why one knows when one does know. I (...) argue that the problem with the Gettier Problem is that it requires us to articulate conditions that suffice for knowledge even if those conditions are non-explanatory. After defending this view, I take up two related methodological issues, one about the evidence that can be given in favor of an account of knowledge, and one about the role that investigating justification might play in investigating knowledge. (shrink)

Chess is sometimes referred to as a ‘mind-sport’. Yet, in obvious ways, chess is very unlike physical sports such as tennis and soccer; it doesn't require the levels of fitness and athleticism necessary for such sports. Nor does it involve the sensory-governed, skilled behaviour required in activities such as juggling or snooker. Nevertheless, I suggest, chess is closer than it may at first seem to some of these sporting activities. In particular, there are interesting connections between the way that we (...) use our perceptual imagination in sports, and also in chess. The same distinction between calculation and natural instinct applies in chess as it does in many physical sports. (shrink)

This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the Network for Sensory Research workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of York on March 19th and 20th, 2012: 1. What is perceptual learning? 2. Can perceptual experience be modified by reason? 3. How does perceptual learning alter perceptual phenomenology? 4. How does perceptual learning alter the contents of perception? 5. How is perceptual learning coordinated with action?

This volume presents articles on epistemology and the theory of perception and introduces readers to the various problems that face a successful theory of perceptual knowledge. The contributors include Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Frank Jackson, David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Roderick Firth, Wilfred Sellars, Paul Snowdon, and John McDowell.

Robert Brandom makes several mistakes in his discussion of Sellars's "Two-Ply" account of observation. Brandom does not recognize the difference in "level" between observation reports concerning physical objects and 'looks'-statements. He also denies that 'looks'-statements are reports or even make claims. They then demonstrate a more correct reading of Sellars on 'looks'-statements.

This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form (experience) for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning (or belief content) (...) by viewing meaning as a certain kind of information-carrying role. (shrink)

Two general approaches to the analysis of knowledge are distinguished: a liberal view that takes the truth of what is known as a condition independent of the justificatory condition, and a conservative view that regards the truth of what is known as implied by the level of justification required for knowledge. Chisholm is classified as a liberal on perceptual knowledge, and his analysis is criticized from a conservative standpoint.

After discussing the manifest inconveniences of Galilean physicalism for both science and common sense, I propose an alternate, Aristotelian ontology of material things and show how it solves the epistemological problems engendered by the New Science. Read at the annual POH Symposium in Lake Wenatchee, WA, May 2011.

I summarise Robert Audi's 'Moral Perception.' I concede that there is such a thing as moral perception. However, moral perceptions are culturally-relative, which refutes Audi’s claims that moral perception may ground moral knowledge and that it provides inter-subjectively accessible grounds which make ethical objectivity possible. Audi's attempt to avoid the refutation tends to convert rational disputes into ad hominem ones. I illustrate that with the example of the ethics of prostitution.

This thesis falls into two parts, a characterizing part, and an explanatory part. In the first part, I outline some of the core aspects of our ordinary understanding of visual perception, and how we regard it as a means of knowing. What explains the fact that I know that the lemon before me is yellow is my visual perception: I know that the lemon is yellow because I can see it. Some explanations of how one knows specify that in virtue (...) of which one genuinely knows, as opposed to merely believes, some content. Such explanations are epistemically satisfactory explanations. We think that visual perceptual explanations of knowledge can be epistemically satisfactory. I argue that that is what it is to regard visual perception as being among our means of knowing. In the second part, I explore how we might explain the fact that visual perception is a means of knowing (assuming that it is a fact). I ask what makes it the case that visual perception is a means of knowing (in the way we ordinarily think that it is)? I suggest that part of the answer to this question is that visual perception, given the nature it has, has a reason giving role. And that is just to say that the nature of visual perception is such that visually perceiving can ensure the satisfaction of some important condition on knowledge (namely, that if one knows that something is the case one must have a good reason to believe that it is the case). In concluding I suggest that giving this sort of explanation doesn't require a specific theory of perception. (shrink)